INTERVIEW TIPS - IIM ASPIRANTS 2015

Naveen Prashanth, 2nd year PGP student, IIM Bangalore

On behalf of the Student Media Club

At the outset, hearty congratulations for getting a step closer towards business education. While this
is an important milestone to have reached, I believe the real hard work begins now. Preparing for
interviews with these top universities requires diligence and focus, given the large pool of aspirants
and the pre-eminence of your potential interviewers. In this piece, I have made an attempt to break
down interview preparation into four components, and the preparation style for each component
has been outlined. Before we get started, it is important to acknowledge that piecemeal preparation
for these interviews will probably be ineffective. The trained interviewers from IIMs will see through
comments made in poor faith, and often keep alternating interview styles so that no real interview
pattern emerges that you can back-calculate from for your preparation. Instead, look at this as a
great opportunity to bring your life to order and documentation, and to think introspectively about
strengths and ambitions. The interview acumen I accumulated at this stage also helped me with job
interviews on campus and will probably serve me well throughout my career.
To begin with, let us assume you have 100 units of time from today to your interview date. The split
of time has been mentioned against each section.
Resume & Achievements (60 units of time)
A good resume has the following characteristics it has been vetted by at least 2 to 3 experienced
people intimate with your capabilities (e.g. managers, professors), it is concise and bears no
misrepresentation. An aspect that is often ignored here is the importance of knowing the macro
implications of your work. More often than not, we are a part of larger teams and own one of the
work streams, however such distinctions are too fine for a third person who may be interested in
the projects macro impact. I learnt this the hard way - my work experience was in the analytics
space and after describing an important project to my IIM Calcutta panel, I was asked to answer the
simple question of what big data really was and why has it come of importance recently. Though I
had worked extensively in this area, it never struck me to ask myself this fundamental question. I
believe it is important to de-focus and look at the big picture of your achievements, and attempt to
anticipate questions or discussions that may arise.
Current Affairs (20 units of time)
At the IIM Bangalore panel, I was asked a question about an anti-money laundering incident that
had just occurred. The discussion veered into the mechanics of AML that I excused myself from since
I was not confident about the same. However, I believe that not knowing about the recent incident
in the first place would have cost me. My recommendation for current affairs preparation is Mint
plus any another newspaper, and a commitment of reading both these newspapers at least 4 to 5
times a week. Pay special attention to articles that relate to your work experience or hobbies, your
state of origin (e.g. Karnataka) and economic happenings in the country (e.g. general budget 2015
takeaways). At IIM Bangalores written aptitude test, my topic was around the possibility of
regulating media and I was able to use then ongoing incidents such as News of the World and other
episodes to make the case.

SoP & Personals (15 units of time)

Some application forms require you to write a Statement of Purpose arguing why you need an MBA
degree. It is nevertheless a good question to have an answer to since it may be asked in the
interviews, and you should spend time thinking about your real motivations for pursuing the degree.
For preparing personals (e.g. State your most challenging incident), the common approach is to
google questions that are typically asked in HR rounds of company interviews and preparing answers
for the same. However, I recommend a slightly different approach. Spend time identifying 4 or 5
stories or incidents from your life that are important to you and have taught you something
interesting. Develop the narrative for these personal stories carefully, arguing why the story is
important, a concise summary of the happenings and finally, and most importantly, what you learnt
about yourself from this incident. At the interview, it is usually possible to fit these stories easily into
questions that are asked and sound mature in your answers since you have thought through them.
Using mock interview modules from professional institutes can help you hear what the answers
sound like to a third person and receive feedback.
Research on the university (5 units of time)
It is important to know aspects such as starting year of the school, batch profile, professors profile
and some key contributions from the university before your interview. For instance did you know
that Dr. Radhakrishnan from ISRO is an IIM Bangalore alumnus? Simple google and Wikipedia links
could give you this information and help you (a) identify if IIMBs character fits with what you are
looking for and (b) make a strong case for why you should be admitted here.
Good luck!

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